


Because You're There

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Trash Triplets x 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-01-09 05:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12269565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: Three years ago, Rey had not yet climbed Everest.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilithsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithsaur/gifts).



> Presenting the first half of my fic/art trade with the lovely lilithsaur, based on her [trash triplets x 2 universe](http://lilithsaur.tumblr.com/tagged/trash%20triplets%20x%202). The gist is that there are three Solo boys— Kylo, Ben, and Matt (the character from Adam Driver's SNL skit)— and three Kenobi girls— Kira (dark Rey), Rey, and Daisy (undercover Rey). I highly recommend checking out that link first, it contains sketches, headcanons, and drabbles that are all super cute. I love this AU and I hope I'll be able to do it justice!

It wasn't that Kylo was inherently unlovable, Ben reminded himself, it was just that he tended to surround himself with things that made him hard to love. Such as the three-meter-long gray snake currently tensed up on the concrete floor with a predator's eerie stillness, giving Ben what he'd dubbed the Stare of Death (TM) with its yellow-ringed pupils. It was a black mamba, _Dendroaspis polylepsis,_ widely considered the most dangerous snake on the African subcontinent and capable of delivering up to 120 milligrams of venom with a single bite. There were reports of _elephants_ backing away from the creature when they encountered it in the bush.

 

Kylo called his specimen "Dottie."

 

The air in the reptile room was unseasonably warm for mid-October in Chandrila, owing to the sheer concentration of heat mats and basking lamps adorning the fifty glass enclosures that lined the walls. A bead of cold sweat trailed down Ben's spine as the snake cocked its coffin-shaped head at him.

 

"Do _not,"_ Kylo said in a voice that sounded like it was coming from a long way off over the blood pounding in Ben's ears, "move a _muscle."_

 

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," Ben joked weakly. Actually, it wasn't a joke— he really, _really_ wanted to. His mammal brain was screaming at him to run for it, but his legs felt like lead, rooted to the spot.

 

"Snake hook, sir?" Mitaka asked, nodding towards the long, thin metal implement on the table.

 

"You want to try hooking a pissed-off mamba, be my guest," Kylo snarled at his assistant. "Get the trap box. Put a scent lure inside."

 

A bone-chilling hiss emanated from the snake. Gaze still fixed on Ben, it unhinged its pale jaws to reveal an inky black mouth with two slender fangs that were already starting to drip.

 

"Huh," Kylo remarked in the mildly surprised tones of a man spotting a newly-painted fire hydrant during his morning walk. "This species prefers to avoid confrontation. She must be feeling very threatened. Take a few steps back, Ben. Slowly."

 

_"I thought you told me not to move!"_

 

"That was before she started gaping. She might calm down if you retreat. Besides, you're currently five feet away from her— not a good place to be around a nine-foot snake."

 

Ben inched back, little by little, heart hammering inside his chest. The serpent's jaws snapped shut, the look in its eyes now less Stare of Death and more Hmm, Perhaps I Won't Inflict Unimaginable Pain and Horror, After All, We'll See. Kylo gingerly snuck up from the side, knees folded as if prepared to jump back at any second, and placed the trap box halfway between Ben and the Sahara's finest. The mamba wove forward; time froze and did not start again until the last scaled inch had disappeared into the trap box and Kylo clicked it shut.

 

"Jesus Christ," Ben muttered, finally able to breathe again. "You know what gets me? You're the one keeping killer snakes in your house but it would've been _my_ fault if I'd croaked."

 

 _"I,"_ said Kylo as he picked up the trap box and walked over to a glass terrarium furnished with driftwood, plants, and cypress mulch substrate, "have a doctorate in herpetology and a license to keep venomous species. _You—"_ he dropped the trap box into the tank— "are the idiot who barged in unannounced and scared the shit out of the snake Mitaka and I were transferring to the examination table to check for mites."

 

"Well, I had to come over because you weren't answering your phone," Ben argued. "I need to ask you something. Something important."

 

"In a moment." Brow furrowed in concentration, Kylo reached into the tank and nudged the trap box's door open. Ben was already wondering if his brother had gotten his last will and testament in order but, instead of the mamba lashing out like a vengeful nightmare and sinking its fangs into Kylo's flesh, nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen for the next several minutes.

 

"Home free, darling," Kylo murmured, his hand safely back at his side. "You can come out now."

 

"It can't understand you, can it?" Ben demanded. "Do snakes even _have_ ears?"

 

Kylo ignored him. Eventually the mamba poked its head out of the trap box, tongue flicking through the air, and then it was slithering over the cypress mulch, its body gleaming almost silver beneath the terrarium lights.

 

"There's my girl," Kylo crooned.

 

Ben shuddered at the tender half-smile on his brother's scarred face. Kylo could go on about _scientific interest_ and _conservation efforts_ all he wanted, but no one looked at a fucking black mamba like that unless they were a crazy bastard— absolutely, without question, a hundred percent insane.

 

"I'll remove the trap box later, once Dottie's calmed down a bit," Kylo said as he checked that the lock on the tank was secure.

 

 _"Dottie,"_ Ben breathed in amazement and in disbelief.

 

Kylo nodded at Mitaka, who started clearing the table, returning various implements to their storage places around the meticulously organized room. Over the clatter, Kylo spoke up, his mildly suspicious, dark-eyed gaze fixed on Ben. "So, what did you have to ask me that was so important?"

 

"Can we have this discussion somewhere we're _not_ surrounded by fanged beasts from hell?" As he said this, Ben was staring at the huge tank that housed the prize of Kylo's collection. Attracted by the flurry of movement beyond the glass walls that caged it, the cobra had unwound itself from its basking spot and was now peering curiously out from an overhanging canopy of bright green pothos leaves. It was a sleek and deadly thing, black as midnight all over save for the strange dark scarlet of its eyes. Kylo had discovered the species on the Malabar Coast and named it _Naja vaderensis,_ Vader's cobra, after their grandfather.

 

Kylo released an exasperated sigh but led the way out of the reptile room. Soon Ben had made himself comfortable on the leather couch in his brother's den while Kylo took the armchair and waited with barely concealed impatience.

 

"Matt and Daisy are taking a week off to celebrate their engagement," Ben announced. "They roped Kira and me into making the drive south with them, and we'll be staying at the Kenobi summerhouse in Naboo."

 

"I fail to see what this has to do with me."

 

Ben raked his fingers through his hair and flashed the beseeching grin that was entirely too much like Han Solo's. "We want you to come with us."

 

"No."

 

"Kylo, you haven't taken a vacation in _years—"_

 

"It's a sixteen-hour drive from Chandrila to Naboo, seven days of being stuck in that house, and another sixteen-hour drive back to civilization. Matt and Daisy will spend all of that time being affectionate and disgusting, as is the way of most newly-engaged couples, while you and Kira will quarrel until one of you ends up murdering the other and exhorts me to help hide the body. I would hardly consider that a vacation."

 

"Kira and I have declared a truce!"

 

"Which I predict will be broken before you've even left Massachusetts."

 

"Maybe before we've finished backing out the driveway," Ben conceded. "But when was the last time we all hung out together? Consider it your engagement gift to our brother and Daisy, who explicitly stated that she misses you. Come on, it'll be great. Mostly."

 

"No."

 

Ben took a deep breath, steeling himself to pull out his ace in the hole. The one thing that had always proved to be a reliable siege weapon against the walls of Kylo's defenses. "Rey's coming, too. We're picking her up at Logan International before heading to Georgia."

 

* * *

 

Three years ago, Rey had not yet climbed Everest. She'd scaled several of the most dangerous mountains around the world, with twelve of the fourteen eight-thousanders under her belt, but Sir Edmund Hillary's greatest love was another ten months away. Three years ago— the last time Kylo had seen her in person— she'd just returned from the Swiss Alps, where she'd lost a man on her team to the north face of the Eiger.

 

 _MURDER WALL CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM!_ various news outfits and adventure publications had blared. _DISTINGUISHED MOUNTAINEER TENG MALAR PERISHES IN AVALANCHE ON THE EIGER'S NORDWAND._

 

For this reason, the welcome home party at Maz's cantina had been respectfully subdued. Kylo would go on to remember that night for the rest of his life— the sound system playing smooth jazz, the television overlooking the bar conscientiously switched off to avoid reports of the accident, and Rey in an over-sized brown sweater taking sips from the emerald green bottle of dry, cidery lambic that was her favorite beer.

 

Kylo was a scotch man himself, the marshy taste of Laphroaig warm on his tongue as he'd approached her, held up the wall with her, the side of his arm almost touching the jut of her shoulder. They'd been next-door neighbors growing up and he'd been in love with her since she was old enough for him to be able to admit it to himself, but it was a sullen, miserable kind of love, the breathtaking intensity of his feelings at war with his awkwardness and the fact that they were rarely on the same continent together these days. It was a helpless, despairing kind of love that hadn't known what to say to her in that moment of jazz music and low light. To congratulate her on her latest successful ascent would have been crass given what had happened after, but he hadn't wanted the first words he said to her in four months to be condolences for someone's death.

 

In retrospect, that had been selfish of him.

 

They'd nursed their drinks in silence until Rey finally broke the ice. "Congratulations," she'd blurted out. "Vader's cobra, huh?"

 

Kylo had stared down into the amber depths of his glass. "Yes." He'd returned from India a fortnight ago; it had taken him eight weeks to find the local myth that Anakin Skywalker had spent the last twenty years of his life searching for. A black snake with red eyes. "It was my grandfather's nickname at university."

 

"You've lost some weight." There had been a soft catch to her voice, something tentative and gentle and concerned.

 

"Malaria will do that to you." Mad with fever on a pallet made of rushes, his body wracked by chills and dripping sweat, wondering if he would die groaning and vomiting in the jungles of Kerala just like his grandfather had, thinking he would have preferred the krait bite that had blinded Anakin and shut down his respiratory system to this even more drawn-out agony...

 

Rey's fingers had tightened around the beer bottle. "I'm glad you're okay."

 

Kylo hadn't been so sure that he was. Two months was too long a time to spend in the wilderness, which always demanded something in return from those who traversed it. The man who emerged from the dense Nilambur thicket was not the same man who got off the plane at Calicut.

 

"I'm glad _you're_ okay," he'd said, turning to look earnestly at Rey, who stood there with dark circles under her hazel eyes and her hair coming loose from its standard three buns. "I know I should feel sorry for that poor bastard, but I'm glad _you_ made it off the damn mountain."

 

"It was supposed to be his last climb." Rey's voice had dropped to almost a whisper, barely audible over the cantina's music and the murmur of various conversations. "One more ascent, and then he would retire. Of course, that was also what he said about Annapurna last year." She'd issued a dull, mirthless laugh. "We were descending along the Spider— it's called that because there are snow-filled cracks radiating from the ice field, looks kind of like a spider's legs— when the avalanche hit. I held on for dear life but Teng got swept off. He was beside me and then he wasn't. It happened so fast."

 

Kylo had cursed under his breath, shoving the hand that wasn't holding his scotch glass into the pocket of his jeans so that he wouldn't give in to the temptation to gather her in his arms. "Why do you keep doing this?"

 

Rey had shot him an amused look. "Strange words from a man who puts his life on the line handling venomous snakes every day."

 

"That's my field of study. You were an anthropology major— what's _your_ excuse for scaling places with nicknames like Murder Wall, Man Eater, and Savage Mountain?"

 

"George Mallory already answered that in 1923," Rey had told him. "A reporter from _The New York Times_ asked him why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. And he said, 'Because it's there.'"

 

At this point, Kira had stormed over, her and Ben's incendiary game of billiards cut short when the latter's flavor of the month sidled up to him and shoved her tongue down his throat while Kira was lining up a shot.

 

"Let's drink," the eldest Kenobi triplet had snarled at her sister and Kylo, and after that the night had devolved into an alcohol-fueled mess.

 

In the end, Rey had gone back with Kylo to his house, the two of them making out like teenagers in the Uber's backseat, reluctant to part lips even as they stumbled through his front door and into the bedroom. Even at the time, some distant, logical part of Kylo's brain had already been aware that this was a bad idea, with the sleaziness of a one-night stand and so far from the beginning he'd envisioned for them. But he'd been helpless in the face of her grief, rattled by how close she'd come to dying on the Nordwand, haunted by the humid, dark green, and ancient loneliness of India, and delirious with three years' worth of love. His kisses had been too rough, his fingers too bruising as they slipped beneath the sweater and pressed into the spurs of her hips and the notches of her spine. He hadn't taken his time with her like he'd often fantasized, hadn't even undressed her properly— she'd still been wearing her top, albeit pushed up over her breasts, when he sank into her, her hands clawing at his shirtsleeves and her back arching with more pain than pleasure.

 

That was how he'd realized, when he was already halfway inside her, that she'd never done this before.

 

Horror had pierced through the muddled haze of Kylo's mind. He'd attempted to pull out but Rey stopped him with a shake of her head and the press of her fingers into his haunches, a strange, wild light in her eyes. He'd tried to make it as good for her as his drunken, lust-addled state would allow, lavishing her breasts with sloppy kisses, trying to school his hips into a semblance of rhythm so that he wouldn't just be mindlessly rutting between her legs. She'd been quiet save for the odd gasp here and there, and she hadn't come. After spending into the condom, he'd rolled off of her and thumbed at her clit in a valiant effort to fulfill his manly duty, but he'd ended up passing out from the combination of too much alcohol and the aftereffects of his own orgasm.

 

It had been awful and embarrassing, but _nothing_ compared to the morning after. Kylo had woken up first, in the tight grip of the most terrible hangover known to man, with Rey curled into a ball at the edge of the bed, her back to him. He'd reached for her, only to pick up his phone instead when it started buzzing with the shrill, insistent reminder that it was time for his morning run. Fat chance of that happening today. He'd intended to switch off the alarm and nothing more, but a couple of Facebook notifications had him opening the app, because it wouldn't be until a month later that he'd deactivate his account in a fit of misplaced rage and penance.

 

Kylo had ended up scrolling through his news feed without realizing it, a compulsion all too common in the social media age. And there had been pictures of Rey and— _some guy._ That had been what Kylo had tried to tell himself. It was just _some guy._ But in the photos Rey sat on his lap at a nightclub in Berlin, her arms around his neck, their cheeks smushed together as they mugged for the camera. They looked good together, happy and flushed and wholesome, and they called each other "peanut" in the comments section.

 

Kylo had stared at his phone for what felt like hours as he was forced to come to terms with the fact that he knew very little about Rey's jet-set life. Had she cheated on her boyfriend with him? Perhaps they'd had a fight and Kylo was a revenge fuck. Or maybe she'd been insensibly drunk and would regret this when she woke up. In any case, he'd been a fool to think this was anything more.

 

 _Some guy'_ s name was Finn; he looked like a kind, cheerful, capable person who treated Rey well and wouldn't fall asleep like a douchebag in the middle of trying to give her an orgasm. In hindsight, these hadn't been entirely rational thoughts, but Kylo had never been the epitome of emotional stability to begin with. And coupled with the fact that Rey had finally kissed him, had finally deigned to let him touch her, and he'd ruined it just like he ruined everything else—

 

He'd fled his own house in the early hours of the morning while she slept, leaving his phone on the bed and not coming back until late in the afternoon. There was an untouched plate of bacon, eggs, and pancakes in the kitchen, long gone cold. It hadn't taken long to put two and two together— she'd made him breakfast and waited for him for God knew how long in the chair that had been pushed back from the table.

 

The next day, Kira had gone over to Kylo's place and punched him. Right in the jaw.

 

"Finn is another mountaineer she met several months ago! He's one of her dearest friends!" Kira had shouted after Kylo fumbled his way through a pathetic explanation. "I know the concept of being that touchy with another human being is alien to you, but that's just how some people _work,_ all right? My sister's never loved anyone but you all her life and, so help me, God, I could _kill_ you for what you did to her!"

 

* * *

 

Ben could think of few things more awkward than the drive to the airport. He was in the backseat between Kira and Kylo while Matt steered the Falcon down the highway with one hand resting on Daisy's denim-clad thigh. It was driving Ben slightly crazy— the professional racer in him wanted to yell at Matt to put both hands on the wheel and just _floor it,_ Jesus, this wasn't some two-lane county road in fucking _Alaska._ He abstained because he didn't want to be responsible for instigating the first fight of a trip that he suspected in his heart of hearts would be full of nothing but.

 

Daisy's and Kira's phones pinged. The two women shuffled through their pockets and checked their messages with a synchronization that would have been eerie to anyone who hadn't been part of a set since birth. Han, for example, often remarked that it gave him the creeps when his three sons turned their heads to look at him at the same time, in an identical manner.

 

"Rey's plane just landed," Kira announced. Ben glanced over just in time to see her exit from the purple Viber group chat with her sisters, and she scowled at him. "Didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to read over people's shoulders?" She was a prickly little ball of tanned skin and multiple silver piercings, wearing her trademark black leather jacket over a black crop top and low-slung black jeans, and Ben wished— not for the first time— that she weren't so damn _hot._

 

"You're hardly the right person to be lecturing me on manners, sweetheart," he retorted. So much for the truce— they hadn't even made it past the state line, as Kylo had predicted.

 

Before Kira could throw her phone at his head or something like that, Daisy spoke from the passenger seat up front. "I've been thinking. Let's not bug Rey about why she didn't summit, all right? She must be sick of that question."

 

"You got it, babe," Matt readily agreed.

 

"Fair," Kira grunted.

 

"Sure," Ben said, followed by a period of deathly quiet as everyone waited for Kylo's response.

 

"That's _definitely_ the first thing I want to ask her after three years of radio silence," Kylo muttered at last.

 

"And whose fault is that?" Kira demanded sharply. "If you hadn't been such a stupid asshole—"

 

"Come on, Kira, give it a rest," Ben snapped. "He's suffered enough. Like _you've_ never made a mistake—"

 

"Oh, I've made mistakes. Going on this trip, for one—"

 

"Hey. Cut it out." Matt glared at the rear view mirror, brown eyes blazing from behind wire-rimmed spectacles. Ben was surprised by this show of assertiveness, considering that the youngest Solo triplet had always been a little scared of Kira. Then again, love made poor saps do foolhardy things, and Matt obviously wanted to ensure that Daisy had the peaceful, happy vacation of her dreams. It was a long shot; in Ben's opinion, Matt would be better off pulling over on the side of the road and ordering him, Kira, and Kylo out of the SUV.

 

As they made the turn to Logan International, Ben reflected on the subject that Daisy had declared taboo. There hadn't been much press attention surrounding Rey's ascent this time— Kanchenjunga lacked the popularity of Everest, the prestige of K2, and even the infamy of Annapurna. But it _was_ something of a holy grail among hardcore mountaineers, and there had been an uproar in that particular community when Rey Kenobi, Jessika Pava, and their guide turned around just shy of the summit. If Rey had gone through with it, she would have been the third woman in recorded history— and, at twenty-four, the youngest person _ever—_ to successfully scale all of the fourteen independent mountains on Earth that were more than eight thousand meters above sea level.

 

By all accounts, no one had been injured and weather conditions on the peak had been tolerable, relatively speaking. The team had just— not gone any further, for a reason they'd kept to themselves. Ben would be lying if he said he wasn't morbidly curious, but he was willing to wait for Rey to bring up the topic of her own free will. He had a soft spot for her because she was stubborn and gutsy, his kindred spirit when it came to extreme sports. You couldn't help but admire someone who'd dropped out of college to make a career out of climbing the world's most unforgiving mountains.

 

Rey was standing outside Terminal E with her yellow rucksack and orange bivy kit— _bright colors,_ Ben thought in passing, _easy to spot in the snow or when it's dark—_ and dressed in her usual getup of leggings, over-sized sweater, and boots. Stashed in the Falcon's luggage compartment were her extra clothes and toiletries that her sisters had packed, along with the couple of books she'd requested from her shelf back home. Technically, the Kenobi triplets still lived together in a three-bedroom apartment on D'Qar Street, although Rey was spending more and more of her time in Europe when she wasn't in Asia.

 

Owing to the current seating arrangement, Kylo had to be the one to get out of the car and help Rey with her things. Not one for pretense, Ben unabashedly watched the reunion unfold. Beyond the broad lines of Kylo's back, he could see Rey blink and tense, something infinitely sad and resigned coming to settle over her slim frame. Kylo, for his part, stayed rooted to the spot, and Ben could just about imagine the look on his brother's face at that moment, that mopey, tender, solemn-eyed expression that was reserved exclusively for Rey.

 

The car behind the Falcon honked, obviously fed up with waiting in queue, and it was only then that Kylo stepped forward like a man walking to the gallows.

 

"Terrible." Ben shook his head. "Remind me to never give a fuck about anyone that much."

 

"You don't have the emotional capacity for it," Kira informed him, nose in the air. "Don't worry."

 

* * *

 

Even before boarding her flight to the States, Rey had already been warned by Kira and Daisy that Kylo would be joining them on this vacation down south. She'd had ample time to steel herself during the twenty-hour flight from Kathmandu to Boston, but all of her mental preparation vanished into the ether the second she saw him again.

 

Rey was used by now to that odd feeling she got whenever she returned to a particular city after a lengthy absence and was always at its strongest when she was fresh off the plane— her family, her friends, would look like strangers, as if she were viewing them from across the span of time and oceans that had kept them separated. As if she had become someone else during her travels. It usually took a while for her brain to catch up, for what had been only a vague, nagging familiarity to solidify into _yes, I know you, yes, I've missed you, yes, tell me everything that happened while I was away._

 

Kylo, though, was different. One look at him and she was back at the bar, back in his arms, back on that bed of drunken kisses and clumsy hands. He'd regained the muscle lost on his Malabar Coast expedition and then some, and his hair was longer and more unruly, falling in sable waves around his pale face and curling at the high collar of his black coat. He gazed at her with soft eyes but she already knew, didn't she, that his softness was deceiving. It masked but didn't dull the thorny edges of his character, the part of him that was prone to striking as viciously as the beautiful, dangerous creatures that lurked in their glass cages at his home.

 

"Rey." There was a wealth of emotions in the way he breathed out her name. Something that sounded like awe to match how his dark eyes were hungrily drinking in the sight of her, mixed with what was more apparently regret. Had this been two months ago, Rey would have taken a certain savage delight at such a thing. But she'd had her epiphanies on the Kanchenjunga circuit, and all she felt now was exhaustion.

 

So she relaxed her posture. Let her mouth curve into a smile that grew more sincere the more she let her facial muscles roll with the movement. It was okay to be glad to see someone again, even if they had broken your heart, she decided. That meant you hadn't let them break _you._

 

"Hey, Kylo," Rey said. "It's been a while."

 

* * *

 

After the initial reunion, with Rey congratulating Matt and Daisy on their engagement as Kira forced Ben to switch places with her so she could sit next to her younger sister, they drove through the last sunlit slivers of Massachusetts without speaking. They hadn't been all together like this in three years and, of course, there was the phantom of what Kylo had done to Rey tagging along like an unwanted passenger in the very back of the SUV. This was the first time in his life that Ben had ever felt indebted to Creedence Clearwater Revival, as the _Willy and the Poor Boys_ album blared from Matt's Spotify playlist and covered up the awkward silence.

 

When they hit Connecticut, they stopped for late lunch at Dex's Diner off the I-95. It was a dilapidated, somewhat corny place, all cracked vinyl upholstery and the smell of grease. They turned more than a few heads— it wasn't every day that _two_ sets of triplets walked into a crummy restaurant along the highway, after all— and Ben immediately circled a heavy arm around Kira's waist, hauling her against him before she could start a fistfight with some openly gawking truckers.

 

"You promised Daisy you'd play nice this week," he reminded her as he steered her to their table. "Stand down, sweetheart."

 

"Stop calling me that, Solo. I'm not one of your girls."

 

Ben wanted to retort that he never called anyone else by that endearment, even if he used it to refer to her sarcastically all the time. However, that felt like too private a thing to admit, especially when she was tucked into his side like this and he couldn't help but notice that she fit perfectly against him. He and Kira shared a long history of mutual antagonism, and, well, if he checked her out once every so often, that was a secret he'd take to his _grave._

 

They sat down with their respective siblings; Rey, Matt, and Daisy occupied one side of the booth, while Kylo, Kira, and Ben crowded in at the other. The plump, middle-aged waitress assured them that Dex made the best corned beef hash within a hundred miles, but since they were in Connecticut they should order the steamed cheeseburger and the white clam pizza, two state specialties, who knew when they'd get to try them again—

 

"We're literally from Massachusetts," Kylo grunted, and Ben experienced a profound sense of satisfaction that his brother wasn't, like, _totally_ whipped by Rey's presence. He couldn't say the same for Matt, who turned his snort into a hasty cough at Daisy's admonishing look.

 

In the end, Kira declared that she would try the steamed cheeseburger because she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Rey went for the corned beef hash, Kylo and Ben ordered steak and eggs, and Matt and Daisy selected from the rather limited vegetarian options— tofu scramble and spinach salad.

 

"Don't you guys miss meat?" Ben wondered once the waitress had bustled off.

 

"You've been asking us that question for five years," sighed Daisy. "No, we do not miss meat. I'm actually considering making the shift to vegan—"

 

Kira pretended to barf. Daisy frowned, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose before she argued, "It's healthy, it's sustainable—"

 

"It's _boring,"_ Ben interrupted, with a lazy smile to make it clear that he was only teasing her.

 

"Actually," Rey mused, "you wouldn't say that if you've tried kwati the way they make it in Pokhara, or the pad thai in Bangkok's Old City district—"

 

"I can't believe this." Kira rolled her eyes. "I'm related to two hipsters. _Actual_ hipsters. Shit."

 

"Come next year, it'll be three," Ben corrected, glancing meaningfully in Matt's direction.

 

"That's right." Rey beamed at the newly-engaged couple. "You haven't told me the story yet. Who proposed to whom?"

 

Matt and Daisy blushed in tandem, and he draped an arm over her shoulders to give her an affectionate squeeze as they exchanged soft, bespectacled gazes. Kira now looked like she was going to barf for real, and Ben was pretty sure he'd follow suit.

 

"She was baking muffins at my place," Matt said. "I tried one and it was so good, you know? Like, really delicious. I swear my eyes rolled into the back of my head from how good it was. I sort of blurted it out without thinking— _'Oh, my God, marry me'—_ and she dropped the tray she was about to put into the oven..."

 

"Batter went everywhere," Daisy blissfully continued. "It was great. I said yes, of course." She wiggled her fingers at Rey, showcasing the delicately carved ring of white gold set with shards of moonstone arranged to look like a flower, or perhaps a star. "He had it specially made. It's a replica of Nenya, the Ring of Water. You know, the one wielded by Galadriel..."

 

"I feel sorry for your future children," Kira snarked, but it was without her usual rancor, as if she were powerless in the face of her sister's incandescent joy.

 

"It's lovely," Rey gushed, inspecting the ring. "I'm so happy for you both." There was the slightest hint of wistfulness in her hazel eyes, and Kylo was staring at her from across the table with an absolutely _stricken_ expression, like he'd been punched in the gut.

 

Ben groaned inwardly. Something told him that this was going to be a long, _long_ trip.

 

* * *

 

The group piled back into the Falcon with full stomachs, and it was only a few minutes of driving down the interstate before Rey went out like a light. Kylo started upon feeling the warm, slight weight of her suddenly sag against him, her head drooping onto his shoulder.

 

"Jet lag," Kira said from her place at Rey's left. "It must be around midnight in Nepal right now. Slide her over, Kylo." She patted her own shoulder briskly, and to Kylo's eternal shame his limbs moved as if of their own accord, gathering Rey to him with an instinctual possessiveness that kind of made him want to die.

 

"It's fine," he managed through a lump in his throat. "I've got her."

 

Kira subjected him to a penetrating gaze for what seemed like ages, the eyes that were identical to Rey's hard and shrewd amidst thick, coal-black eyeliner. Finally, she shrugged, clicking the ball stud on her tongue against her teeth. "Whatever," she said under her breath before turning away to give Matt shit for his taste in music.

 

"Kira, we are _not_ going to listen to Slayer," Ben spoke up after a while, exasperated. "Traffic's bad enough as it is. We don't need Matt's road rage amping up."

 

"I don't have road rage issues!" Matt yelled.

 

While the rest of the group bickered, Rey nuzzled into Kylo's chest in her sleep. He tightened his arms around her even as his mind screamed that he had no right to do this, no right to hold her like nothing had ever happened, like he hadn't _used_ her and then wandered around the city waiting for her to leave while she made him _breakfast_ and sat all alone in his house, Jesus _Christ—_

 

Self-loathing roiled in his gut. He rested his chin on top of her head and looked out the car window, eventually closing his eyes against the sight of New England passing them by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so we're clear, the techniques for handling venomous snakes described in this fic are rooted in my own experience and the commonly-accepted practices of licensed professionals, but please don't try to emulate them in real life. Never handle hots without extensive training, capable backup, and ready access to antivenin.
> 
> Thank you to the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology group chat for helping me figure out U.S. geography and East Coast road trip logistics!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dodges tomatoes and rotten eggs*
> 
> I am truly sorry that this fic took so long to update and has somehow been expanded into a three-parter! Travel, work, and social obligations kept me from writing, and once I got back into it I realized that I would have to move the last few plot points over to a third installment due to pacing issues. I do have the next couple of weeks free-ish before my next travel abroad, and I fully plan to devote that time to my WIPs.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone for the continued patience and support! It's more than flaky ol' me deserves, lmao. I'd love to know your thoughts on this update, pretty please? :D

Rey was dreaming of Nanga Parbat, which meant that her exhaustion was more deep-seated than she'd previously thought. It was only whenever her mental, physical, and emotional state hit rock bottom that her subconscious could bring itself to relive the Killer Mountain, the Western bastion of the Himalayas and the eight-thousander that had come closest to shattering her spirit.

 

In her dream she was on the Mazeno Ridge with Teng, who had still been alive five years ago. Jessika and the other members of the expedition were too far off; she couldn't see them amidst the snowstorm that had abruptly crashed over the sheer vertical reliefs, transforming the world into a blur of white and gray. After fourteen days on the thirteen-kilometer-long ridge, they were running low on food, energy, and morale. The summit was another day away, and then after the summit there would be the Diamir Face, the arduous descent on fixed ropes while the wind howled and the snow piled up...

 

_"Look on the bright side, kid,"_ Teng wheezed, although in truth Rey could no longer remember if he'd actually said this or if it had been something she'd thought at the time,  _"after this? Everything else is going to be easy, like taking a walk in the park. Cerro Torre, Everest, the Matterhorn— hell, maybe even K2."_

 

Rey was coaxed awake by the SUV rolling to a stop, by someone repositioning her carefully in her seat. Doors were being thrown open, her companions exhaling in relief as they stretched their legs. It was a while before she opened her eyes to late evening and the neon signs of a gasoline station.

 

She clambered out of the car, inhaling fresh, dry autumn air. "Where are we?" she asked Kylo, who was hovering by her side of the Falcon as if he'd been standing by in case she woke up.

 

"Virginia." He wouldn't meet her eyes but his voice was soft. "Did you sleep okay?" He jerked his head in the direction of the convenience store. "Can I get you anything?"

 

"I'm fine." God, she hated this, the starlit night, the remorse painted over his features that she could do nothing about. Kira had explained why Kylo left that day, and Rey didn't know if the truth was worse than thinking it had been just a drunken one-night stand for him. Whatever the case, the end result had been the same— Rey sitting in that kitchen, waiting and waiting and waiting for someone who never came back. It had been a misunderstanding, yes, but the fact that Kylo hadn't bothered to ask for an explanation... You didn't run out on the person you loved. Surely  _that_ meant he didn't return her feelings. Not in the way she wanted. Rey had come to accept that in the years that followed.

 

Ben and Kira had disappeared into the convenience store, while Matt had just finished filling up the Falcon's tank and was now approaching Daisy— who had perched on the hood, legs dangling in the air— with an enterprising gleam in his eye. She dimpled up at him and he happily settled his lanky frame between her spread thighs, nuzzling her nose as she wound her arms around his neck. They murmured sappy things to each other in low voices, foreheads pressed together, blissfully enveloped in their own little world.

 

Exchanging embarrassed glances, Kylo and Rey moved further away from the car in order to give the couple some privacy. "That kid," Kylo muttered, because for him and Ben their youngest brother would always be the kid, even at thirty-four. "Never thought he'd be the first one to settle down. He was such a dweeb, you know? Still is."

 

"I could say the same of Daisy," Rey quipped. This was all right, wasn't it? This was banter, like they'd used to have. "They fell in love in the dweebiest of ways, after all."

 

Kylo snorted. "Yeah, tell me about it." Matt and Daisy were video game programmers— for rival companies at first, and then Matt had been pirated by Resistance Studios and he'd started crushing on his former next-door neighbor while they worked on  _Afterlight,_ an elegant anarchist RPG that had taken the geek world by storm six years ago. Daisy was the town genius— graduated college at eighteen, with an IQ straight through the roof. As Matt put it, he'd never stood a chance. He had steadfastly weathered the tasteless jokes about robbing the cradle and the drama of an office romance, and now they were getting married. It was like a fairytale written in Klingon.

 

There was a commotion as Kira stomped out of the convenience store, Ben hot on her heels. "What is your  _problem,_ Kenobi?" he demanded.

 

"You!" Kira yelled back as she got into the driver's seat of the Falcon. Despite her obvious fury, she didn't slam the door shut because the old yet rigorously maintained SUV was Han's baby and there was no one the Kenobi girls respected more on this earth. Daisy scrambled off the hood and Kira started the engine, and Rey squinted at the convenience store in a bid to decipher the source of this latest quarrel.

 

It didn't take long to figure out— two leggy blondes, backpackers from the looks of them, giggled and darted interested glances at Ben's retreating back through the glass walls.

 

"Nice girls," Ben commented once he had reached Rey and followed her line of sight. "They're from, like,  _Romania,_ can you believe that?" They waved at him and he waved back with his trademark lopsided grin.

 

The Falcon's horn pierced the night. Kylo grabbed his brother by the collar and hauled him towards the vehicle with a grunted, "All right, cowboy, time to go."

 

"Okay, but I'll be leaving my heart in Bucharest," Ben joked.

 

"I'm sure that's not all you want to leave," Rey said under her breath.

 

She sat up front while Daisy and the Solo triplets squeezed into the backseat. Kira peeled away from the gas station, the blare of heavy metal rattling the car windows.

 

* * *

 

Virginia and the Carolinas came and went, at first in a wash of blurry gray silhouettes and then in pink-tinged, predawn colors. Rey had committed an unforgivable breach of road trip protocol by falling asleep in the passenger seat, but Kira figured she could give her sister a pass this time— the girl  _had_ just spent weeks trekking through the wilderness of Nepal, after all.

 

Glancing at the rear view mirror, Kira saw Kylo hunched over his phone, a lightly snoring Ben pillowed on his shoulder. "Are you the only one awake back there?"

 

"Yes. Do you need me to take over?"

 

"It's only another hour." They were in Georgia now. The exit to Naboo would be coming up any moment. "I just need you to keep an eye out for the turn."

 

"Afraid you'll miss it?" Kylo's tone made clear that he knew she had other things on her mind. "I think he does it to get a rise out of you, to be honest."

 

She debated acting like she had no idea what he was talking about, but it was far too early in the morning for pretense. "Then that makes him an even bigger asshole than I'd assumed."

 

"Maybe..." Kylo hesitated. "Maybe you should ask yourself why it bothers you so much when Ben flirts with other women."

 

"You're the last person who should be giving me advice on interpersonal relationships, Kylo."

 

The hand that wasn't holding his phone lifted in surrender. "Point taken. There's the exit, by the way."

 

"Yeah, yeah, I see it."

 

Turning off from the I-95 was like gradually entering a different world. Here the oak trees grew thick and close together, lining the road with tapestries of scarlet and gold. Kira knew that if she rolled down her window she'd be able to catch a whiff of distant marshlands, pungent and slightly salty, overlain with the lemony fragrance of magnolias. There was no doubt about it, they were in the low country now, the upper half of the Atlantic seaboard already a distant dream.

 

_We're like birds,_ Kira mused as she guided the Falcon down that lonely stretch of dark concrete, beneath a lightening sky,  _flying south for the winter._

 

* * *

 

Born in 1934, Sir Obi-Wan Kenobi had been part of the last wave of British sons who left the motherland to pursue adventure in the untamed regions of her former colonies. Unlike most, however, he had never hunted for sport, choosing instead to dedicate his life to naturalist study and conservation. Somehow, he'd found the time to fall in love with an American, buy a house in Naboo, and have a son who grew up and eventually moved to Chandrila, Massachusetts. After Obi-Wan and his wife Satine passed, the house in Georgia had been turned into a vacation home for their son and his own family, as well as their friends.

 

Kylo hadn't been here in more than half a decade. He was startled by how unchanged it looked, the white two-storey antebellum with the black roof and the wraparound mahogany porch nestled amidst a grove of evergreen oaks, the branches veiled in silvery sprays of Spanish moss. Behind the house was the wooden pier, twelve feet in length, and the shimmering azure expanse of Lake Paonga.

 

"This place is a time machine," Rey commented through a yawn, rubbing her bleary eyes as the group staggered out of the Falcon. When her hand dropped back to her side, her irises were a luminescent shade of topaz in the same early morning light that brought out her freckles, and Kylo suddenly understood what she meant. Just like that, it was the summer of 2011, the air laden with heat and honeysuckle, and her parents were still alive and he was not yet in love with her— although he'd started noticing how alarmingly pretty she'd grown up to become. Daisy operated on a separate plane of existence, Kira was layer upon layer of armor, but Rey was... Rey. Sweet smiles and stubbornness and long, tanned legs and diving off the pier beneath a southern sun.

 

The interior of the house had not changed much, either. A caretaker saw to everything on a regular basis, and it was straight out of  _Better Homes and Gardens,_ with polished cherry wood floors, white lace curtains, and antique furniture. The walls, mantelpiece, and accent tables were covered in silver-framed photographs, mostly from Obi-Wan and Satine's travels, and Kylo's gaze immediately zeroed in as it always had to a particular one carefully arranged above the fireplace.

 

His grandfather stared at him from the mangrove thickets of the Sundarbans. It was both random and inevitable, the passing down of traits from generation to generation like echoes through time. Ben had inherited Han Solo's grin, while Kylo had gotten the intensity of Anakin Skywalker's eyes and his fatal attraction to what no one was meant to master.

 

Beside Anakin, in the photograph, was Obi-Wan, unsmiling yet serene. The two men carried rifles and the carcass of a Bengal tiger lay in the background— a huge, striped thing sprawled clumsily across the forest floor.

 

"Ugh, I hate that photo," Kira grumbled when she noticed what Kylo was staring at. "It looks like it belongs on the Wikipedia page for 'great white hunter.' It's  _embarrassing."_

 

"Grandpa didn't have a choice," Rey reminded her, loyal as always to a memory. "That Bengal was a man-eater, like the lions of Tsavo and the Gummalapur leopard. It was terrorizing the riverine villages, killing people in gruesome ways, and so the local government asked for his help."

 

The Solo and Kenobi triplets knew the story of their grandfathers by heart. Obi-Wan had been tracking the Mauler of Khulna for five weeks when he met Anakin, who at the time was conducting research on viper species endemic to the Sundarbans for his doctorate. Anakin had decided to help, and a fast friendship took root in those dense jungles.

 

They'd been ambushed by the tiger on the fortieth night of the hunt; they'd set up a blind beneath a rocky outcrop and waited for hours, a tethered water buffalo lowing and snuffling in the distance. But the Mauler hadn't taken the bait— had instead gone straight for the two men. The way Obi-Wan recounted it, he'd looked up and seen moonlight reflected in feline eyes and a dark, powerful shape about to pounce from above. Anakin had fired first, clipping the beast's shoulder and forcing it down from the rock, and Obi-Wan had finished it off with a headshot.

 

"They found an old bullet in its hind leg," said Daisy. "That's why it became a man-eater, it couldn't hunt its usual prey. And that's what I liked about Grandpa— everything he ever had to kill, he made a conscious effort to not vilify them. They were just being animals."

 

"Except for the Count, right?" said Ben. "That thing was pure evil right from the start." He was talking about a big jaguar that had plagued the Amazon for years, going as far as to burst into people's homes and drag them away into the undergrowth. In his journals, Obi-Wan called it the Count because of the imperious way it carried itself. Man and predator had stalked each other for days before Obi-Wan's bullet hit its mark, and postmortem had revealed no broken teeth, no injured limbs, nothing that could explain its aberrant behavior.

 

"Grandpa theorized that the Count's mother could have been a man-eater herself, for the usual reasons, and so he affixed on humans as prey from an early age," Rey said. "Which is disturbing, but certainly more scientific than an animal being evil."

 

Kira raised an eyebrow at her. "Daisy, is that you? Did you and Rey switch identities without telling us?"

 

"Even if we did, you'd never know until we confirmed it," Rey shot back with good humor.

 

The group then busied themselves with hauling in the luggage and staking out bedrooms throughout the house. Kylo, however, lingered at the fireplace, still preoccupied with the photograph. After that first hunt, Obi-Wan and Anakin had corresponded for decades, meeting up Stateside whenever they could. The relationship deteriorated, however, as Anakin grew more and more obsessed with his holy grail, his Malabar Coast serpent. The Count had been Obi-Wan's final hunt before he permanently retired to Naboo, but his old friend had already died seven years prior, the krait striking out of nowhere, too far from the nearest antivenin stockpile.

 

But in this photograph on the wall of the Kenobi summerhouse in Naboo, Anakin Skywalker was still in his early twenties, smooth-faced and sepia-toned, not yet possessed by a dream of black scales and scarlet eyes.

 

* * *

 

Matt locked the door of the master bedroom with a resounding click. Warm anticipation pooled low in his abdomen as he turned to Daisy, who was waiting for him in the middle of the green canopy bed, knees tucked beneath her and hands placed primly on her lap. She'd removed her glasses and tugged her brown hair free from its usual braid, a slight smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

 

"Alone at last," Matt said with a smirk.

 

"And not a moment too soon," Daisy returned in kind, hazel eyes sparkling.

 

He leaned over, bracing his arms on the mattress as he pressed his lips to hers. She kissed him back, sweet and teasing, before pulling away. He groaned and chased after her mouth, but something was apparently weighing on her mind. "I know this wasn't exactly what you wanted, having everyone else tag along..." she started to say, nervous and just the slightest bit forlorn. Matt was tempted to brush off her concerns with another kiss that would then lead to activities far more pleasurable than discussing their respective sets of siblings, but he'd learned a long time ago that communication was important. His dysfunctional family tended to avoid it all costs, letting unresolved issues fester until they burst at the worst possible moment and suddenly Han and Leia were sleeping in separate beds or Kylo and Ben weren't talking to each other for half of high school or Luke had fucked off to some remote Mediterranean island and not come back for, like,  _years—_

 

"Babe?" Daisy waved a hand in front of Matt's face. "Where'd you go?" Her brow creased. "Are you really  _that_ mad I insisted they come along? I'm so sorry, I just thought..."

 

"No, no." Matt scooted up the bed, taking Daisy's hands in his. Communication. Right. That was key. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't initially hoping to have you all to myself for a week. But then I thought about it and, well, I know how important your sisters are to you and how happy you get whenever I make an effort to bond with the two morons—  _Kylo and Ben,_ I mean," he hastily corrected when she glared, "and, honestly? If you're happy, I'm happy." He brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing the back of her palm. "Besides, we'll be together for the rest of our lives, so what's a week in the greater scheme of things, really?"

 

Daisy beamed at him. He melted, beaming back.  _God,_ he was such a sap for this woman, it was almost humiliating. She reached up and plucked his glasses off the bridge of his nose, placing them on the bedside table next to hers, and her smile sharpened into a playful smirk.

 

"You  _do_ have me all to yourself right  _now,_ though," she nonchalantly pointed out. "I wonder what you're going to do about it."

 

Matt was already reaching for the buttons of his fiancée's shirt. "I may have some ideas."

 

* * *

 

Once Ben had crashed into his teens, knobby-kneed and cracked-voiced and too old to look for crawdads or catch fireflies, it hadn't taken him long to figure out that the rustic charm of the countryside was inversely proportional to the amount of time one spent in it.  _But,_ the thing about living in a big city like Chandrila was that you found yourself daydreaming about trees and fresh air and all that crap and so you always looked forward to vacations— in theory, that is, until you were stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but drink sweet tea on the back porch overlooking some crummy lake.

 

It was very good sweet tea, though. The caretaker had stopped by after lunch to make a couple of pitchers and a tray of biscuits. A proper southern welcome.

 

"Don't tell me you're already bored."

 

At the sound of Rey's voice, Ben turned away from the calm surface of the Paonga, which had turned deep sapphire in the faded light of an autumn afternoon, to smile at the woman who had just walked out onto the porch. "Has your body clock realized it's back home?"

 

"More or less." She'd slept through breakfast and lunch and was now heartily chomping down on one of the caretaker's biscuits. "But mine and Kira's room is also right next to Matt and Daisy's, so..."

 

"Oh, my God, are they  _still_ at it?" Ben cringed. "The  _worst."_

 

"I guess I can't exactly blame them. It's engagement bliss, or whatever."

 

"What do they have to be so blissful about?" Ben groused. "Shackled to one person for the rest of your life, fighting about mortgages and blowing cash on ungrateful kids, day in, day out, until the sweet release of death..."

 

"Easy there, F. Scott Fitzgerald." Rey settled into the rocking chair next to his. "Marriage isn't for everyone but you could at least  _try_ to be happy for your brother. Daisy says you've been giving Matt nothing but grief since they broke the news."

 

"Hes my kid brother, I'm legally  _obliged_ to give him grief. Besides, I went on this celebration trip, didn't I?"

 

"You told them to get a ball and chain cake topper on the drive here!"

 

"Didn't know you were awake for that," Ben said ruefully.

 

"I was drifting in and out." Rey frowned. "I don't remember if you guys changed seats between Connecticut and Virginia— did I fall asleep on you, by any chance? I think I might have drooled. Sorry about that."

 

He shook his head. "Not on me."

 

"Oh." Rey's confused expression deepened. "But why would he..." She trailed off.

 

_Aaaand, cue the awkward silence,_ Ben thought. It rolled on forever, during which he drank his sweet tea and Rey ate her biscuit, the two of them not knowing what to say. He contemplated doing Kylo a solid and insisting to Rey that his brother was truly sorry for what he'd done, that he'd changed for the better, but was that really Ben's place? Likely he'd just get chewed out for interfering in other people's business.

 

The tension led to a state of affairs Ben had never thought possible— namely, Kira's arrival being a source of relief. "Why are the two of you rocking on the porch like a couple of retirees?" she asked suspiciously as she strode out the door in a black two-piece, her hair pulled into a bun.

 

"You're joking," Ben said. "It's in the middle of  _October._ That lake is going to feel like an ice bath."

 

"Scared of a little cold water?" Kira sneered. "Just stay here then, where the big bad temperature can't kill you." She included Rey in this challenge, tossing her sister a smirk.

 

"I spend weeks on end in temperatures that can  _actually_ kill you," Rey said calmly. "I'm fine here, thanks."

 

But it was an unspoken law of nature that Ben Solo and Kira Kenobi would always rise to each other's bait. Narrowing his eyes, Ben thrust his half-empty glass into a less-than-enthused Rey's hand. "Hold my beer."

 

"This is  _sweet tea!"_ she called but he was already running after Kira, his sights trained on her tanned, athletic figure that the strips of black fabric showcased to cut perfection amidst the burnished red and gold of that cloudy autumn day.

 

Ben started shedding his clothes once he hit the pier's wooden floorboards, leaving a trail of jeans, sweater, and socks in his wake. By the time he kicked off his boots, Kira had already launched herself off the edge of the pier, a hoarse whoop torn loose from her throat as she cannonballed into the lake.

 

_Crazy girl,_ Ben thought with a reluctant twinge of affection, diving in after her clad only in his pinstriped boxer shorts.

 

He started freezing the moment the water closed in over his head. "Jesus fucking Christ!" he yelped through chattering teeth when he came up for air. Kira was laughing at him—  _cackling,_ more like it, the devil's own grin threatening to split her face wide open.

 

" _Language,_ Solo." She splashed him, the previous animosity from the gas station seemingly forgotten, and he spat out the surprise mouthful of lake water and fixed her with a mock glare.

 

"I'm going to get you for that," he promised darkly.

 

Kira snorted and swam away, quick as a fish. Ben gave chase, alternating between kicking off from the mud of the shallows and paddling through the deeper areas, and for a while it was just the two of them and the strange line between enemy and friend they'd been straddling for decades pulled taut under the gray sky and in the dark blue of everything.

 

His arms closed around her at last, their bare legs tangling together as she shrieked and struggled to break free. "Oh, no, you don't." He pulled her slack against him— which, in hindsight, was not the smartest of moves, because now her breasts were pressing into his bare chest and her cherry-red lips were so, so close...

 

_Ah, shit._

 

Ben darted back from Kira. It was an act of self-preservation, the instinct of someone who'd accidentally touched a boiling hot surface. It was a product of the human mind working at light speed to conjure hundreds of outcomes, none of them favorable.

 

She blinked, beads of water spiking her long lashes. "What's with you?" she asked belligerently, because belligerence was Kira's go-to reaction to— well, most things, but  _particularly_ the things that confused or unsettled her.

 

"I..." Ben frantically cast around for a diversion before deciding on the most obvious one. His arm sliced upwards, sending up a formidable spray of water that she was too startled to dodge. He smirked, although it felt oddly painful to do so. "Gotcha."

 

* * *

 

Early the next morning, an earth-shattering sneeze echoed through the thin walls of the house. It was followed by a series of rattling coughs from a different bedroom, and then the respective sources groaned in tandem.

 

"Getting sick on the second day of vacation has got to be some kind of record," Matt remarked later at quarter to ten when everyone had gathered in the dining room for breakfast. Ben and Kira glowered at him from the other end of the table, the two of them wrapped in blankets and scarves as they picked at their food.

 

"It's what they deserve," Rey said smugly.

 

"Remind me to never go along with another one of your bright ideas ever again," Ben mumbled to Kira.

 

She stuck her tongue out at him, but the effect was ruined by a sudden, violent sneeze that went everywhere— including Daisy's bowl of muesli.

 

_"Gross."_ Daisy pushed her food away and scraped her chair across the floor, widening the distance between her and her sister. "That's it— go to your rooms, the two of you. You're walking epidemics."

 

"Don't go back to  _our_ room, Ben," Kylo protested. "I don't want to get sick."

 

"Same here." Rey was marginally more sympathetic as she glanced over at Kira. "I'm sorry, but I can't afford to catch your cold."

 

"Fine," Kira grumped. "Not like there aren't a hundred other bedrooms in this house, anyway."

 

"Oh, but—" Daisy's eyes widened as if she'd just remembered something. Matt was quick to catch on, the couple exchanging chagrined looks.

 

"But  _what?"_ Ben growled through a throat full of phlegm.

 

"The thing is, the caretaker only prepared the three big rooms," Daisy nervously explained. "The others are locked and she has the keys."

 

A jolt of panic flooded through Rey's system, putting her on high alert. "So call her to come over and—"

 

"She left for Florida this morning," Matt interrupted, an apologetic note in his voice, "to visit her grandparents."

 

"You know what, it's fine," Kylo hastened to say. "I can kip in the den. It's not a big deal."

 

Daisy bit her lip. The youngest Kenobi was a soft touch, always had been, and it was obvious that sometime over the next few seconds she was going to insist that she room with Rey so that Matt could room with Kylo and everyone would have a bed to sleep on. Rey was  _not_ going to be  _that_ person, the one who ruined her sister's yay-I'm-engaged trip all because  _she_ couldn't move past her own issues.

 

"It's okay," Rey said to Kylo. Everyone's gaze snapped to her, and somehow  _his_ was the darkest, the most burning, like a cornered animal in the forests of her grandfather's youth. "We can share."

 

"Hang on a minute." Kira looked fierce— or, at least, as fierce as someone could look when they were bundled up and had a runny nose. "Does this mean that Solo and I will be  _sleeping together?"_

 

There was a pause as the unfortunate double meaning hung in the air.

 

"Well," said Ben slowly, "we don't  _have_ to— frankly, I doubt I'd be up for it in my current condition—"

 

And, because he knew Kira so well, he was already scrambling to his feet as he said this, and she chased him out of the dining room with fists raised and sneezed-snarled promises to ensure his slow and painful demise, the two of them hacking and coughing, blankets fluttering about their knees as they ran through the hallways of the summerhouse.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I've been at absolute rubbish at updating this fic but it's finally done! I hope this monster of a chapter is a satisfactory conclusion. Thank you so much, darling lilithsaur, for letting me play in your sandbox, and thank you also to everyone who has read, commented, bookmarked, and left kudos! I'm [kylorenvevo](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr if you guys want to keep in touch.
> 
> I'm watching _The Last Jedi_ later this afternoon. In eleven hours from now, to be exact. Whatever happens, it's been a privilege to serve on this ship with so many fine people. See you all on the other side!

The harvest moon had come late that year and there in the last gasps of October it lingered as a waning golden sickle above the oak trees, as a near-perfect mirror image reflected in the still, dark lake water, as a lonesome wraith tentatively nudging beams of pale light into the room that Kylo now shared with Rey.

 

Her bed was pushed up against the wall and she was sitting with her back pressed to the windowsill; she existed to him as a silver-etched silhouette framed between white lace curtains, her hair in a messy bun and her long legs bared by pajama shorts that seemed too skimpy for this time of year, but then again Kylo supposed that a southern night would practically feel like summer after the high-altitude climes of Nepal.

 

He was stretched out on his own bed all the way across the room, trying not to look at her and failing miserably. They'd turned off the lights an hour ago but they were both restless, the memory of the last time they'd been alone together in the dark like this so alive that it had eyes, watching them from shadowy corners, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

 

_I'm sorry,_ he wanted to tell her,  _for everything._

 

But he couldn't bring himself to give voice to the words because... well, when it came right down to it, they were just  _words,_ weren't they? Kylo had been at his parents' house when news of Rey summiting Everest trickled down to Chandrila's local news station—  _Hometown girl does it again! Rey Kenobi climbs the greatest of them all!—_ and, when the segment had ended, whatever Han saw on Kylo's face had made him say, "A man is defined by his actions, not his memory."

 

"Dad," Kylo had reproached him after a short pause, "that's from  _Total Recall."_

 

Han had burst out laughing, so exuberantly, so wheezing and so long, that Kylo had been half-afraid that he'd inadvertently triggered another heart attack. "Bet I could've gotten away with it if it'd been either of your dunderhead brothers."

 

"How many times do I have to tell you to stop insulting your children?" Leia had sighed.

 

Kylo'd hung on to those words— possibly because he was a sucker and it was the only bit of fatherly advice that Han had ever given him.  _A man is defined by his actions._ He would not ask Rey for the forgiveness that he didn't deserve. Besides, wasn't that just another way of adding to someone else's burden, expecting them to absolve you from your sins? He would let her be, then, let her continue to be brilliant and amazing without getting dragged down by the likes of him— or, more specifically, the likes of what he had become after the jungles, after all those dead ends, after the strangely hollow vindication of his grandfather's ghost.

 

She was hunched over her phone in the moonlight, the volume turned down low but their surroundings quiet enough for him to hear the tinny muzak of what was undoubtedly one of those word games that she loved so much. Or, well, she didn't  _love_ them, she'd confessed to him once, it was just that being able to solve the puzzles made her feel smart. Made her feel like less of a failure about dropping out of college.

 

"College is for us plebes who  _don't_ have superhuman powers," Kylo had said, with one of those rare, awkward half-smiles of his that always came easier around Rey.

 

She'd rolled her eyes. "You'd be singing a different tune if you were Daisy Kenobi's sibling."

 

"You're  _all_ prodigies in your own ways, the three of you," Kylo had said honestly. "You're all destined for greatness. Us Solo boys, we're just hoping to catch some of the light."

 

"Kylo," Rey had huffed, lips twitching in exasperated amusement, "that's from  _Treasure Planet."_

 

_I miss that so much,_ Kylo thought now as he did what he knew was a poor job of pretending to be on his own phone while sneaking glances at the woman on the other side of the room.  _I miss being able to make you laugh. Every time I managed to pull that off, it felt like a gift._

 

"I don't suppose  _picgeal_ is a word." Rey didn't so much as glance up from her phone, but there was no doubt that the slight inflection at the end of her sentence was meant for him.

 

"No," said Kylo, thinking it over, grateful for the reprieve from his demons. "But  _pelagic_ is."

 

"Thanks." She'd been so unerringly calm and polite since Logan International that it was playing havoc on his own composure. There was a faint splash of upbeat melody to indicate that she'd completed the puzzle. "What does it mean?"

 

Kylo closed his eyes. He had to, because if he looked at Rey for one second longer he'd cross the room and get down on his fucking knees and tell her everything and beg for a second chance. "Open sea."

 

* * *

 

It was the fourth day of the worst vacation ever. Or maybe it was the fifth. Or maybe Kira had died of the common cold and this was her hell, being cooped up in a room with Ben Solo, sharing  _one_ bed.

 

Admittedly, it was a huge bed, a true kingsize, and exceedingly luxurious, with its fat pillows, downy comforter, and mattress that made you feel like you were sinking into a cloud. But Ben was  _massive,_ six feet and three inches of sheer muscle and long legs and arms with the reach of, like,  _Texas_ or whatever. And he had a habit of sleeping diagonally across the mattress. Who the hell slept diagonally? Assholes, that's who.

 

_"Get. Off."_ Crowded up all the way to the edge of the bed, with Ben's stupid monkey arms wrapped around her like she was his favorite stuffed toy, Kira pushed her elbow into his ribs, eliciting a startled grunt. Unfortunately, he didn't budge, choosing instead to tighten his hold on her midriff in retaliation, pressing her spine against his bare chest. She wasn't even sure he was fully awake— a peek at the brass table clock on the nightstand revealed that it was a little after seven in the morning. Kira had been roused from glorious Benadryl-enhanced slumber due to the fact that—

 

"You're a fucking furnace, Solo," Kira complained, attempting to wriggle out of his grasp. "I won't say it again—  _get off!"_

 

"I'd love to," Ben snuffled into her hair, "but what's that old adage?" He yawned. "Ah, yes— 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.'"

 

"I didn't mean it like— not everything is a sexual innuendo, you pervert!" she seethed. And then she sneezed.

 

It went  _everywhere._

 

"Why," Ben ground out after a short pause, marginally more awake than he'd been a few seconds ago, "is the back of my hand  _wet?"_

 

"Take a guess," Kira replied with savage delight.

 

"You're so gross, Kenobi." He let go of her at last, moving to his side of the bed and retrieving the box of tissues that had fallen to the floor sometime during the night.

 

She sat up, steadfastly ignoring how cold she felt all of a sudden without Ben holding on to her. She glared at him as he groggily wiped off his hand and then used a fresh wad of tissue to blow his own nose. In the morning light, his thick, dark hair stuck out at odd angles. His rough-chiseled features were gray at the edges, bags under his eyes and lips chapped and overly large nose as red as a tomato. He looked as terrible as  _she_ felt, and it was irritatingly endearing for some reason.

 

There was a perfunctory knock on the door followed by Matt and Daisy bustling into the room, each one carrying a tray that they placed on the table in the corner, by the windows.

 

"Good morning, invalids," Daisy chirped. "There's congee, orange juice, and some sausages if you're feeling up to it. The postman just called— he found out from the caretaker that I was here and he says he has a package for me, so we're going into town later. Let us know if you want anything."

 

"I want to go with you," Kira said. "I'm getting stir-crazy."

 

"Not a chance, sis. You need to rest."

 

"I'm feeling much better. As a matter of fact, I'm  _fine."_ To prove it, Kira scrambled out of bed. The moment she got to her feet, the world spun and she fell back down, landing partly on the mattress and partly on Ben's outstretched arm. "Ugh."

 

"Yeah, you're fit as a fiddle," Matt joked, because the Solo men were all annoying like that. God, what was Daisy thinking,  _marrying_ one of them?

 

"Some fresh air  _would_ do you both good, though," the Kenobi triplet in question mused. "The sun's out today, so maybe you can bundle up and sit out on the porch."

 

Matt grinned at his fiancée. "You're going to make such a great mom," he said in a tone of unabashed devotion.

 

"I'm going to puke," Ben declared.

 

"Same," Kira muttered.

 

"No, I mean I'm  _literally_ going to—" He slipped his arm out from under Kira's head and staggered to the en-suite.

 

By the time the sounds of retching, flushing, and gargling had abated and Ben had walked out of the bathroom, Matt and Daisy had already beaten a hasty retreat and Kira was now sitting at the table, unenthusiastically picking at the congee. She didn't have much of an appetite but she needed to line her stomach before taking meds. Ben pulled on a T-shirt and sat across from her, rubbing his nose.

 

"Can't taste anything," he remarked a short while later, mouth full. "It's too bad 'cause Daisy makes awesome congee."

 

"Look on the bright side. If she fucked this batch up, we'll never know."

 

Ben's laugh turned into a painful-sounding cough. He winced at the end of it, tears in his eyes. With his hair falling over his forehead, he looked like a miserable puppy, and Kira found herself fighting back a wave of what suspiciously felt like affection. For  _Ben Solo._ Wow. She had to be  _seriously_ ill.

 

* * *

 

Naboo gave Matt the creeps. It was a perfectly lovely, pleasantly serene little town, and that was exactly the problem with it. You just didn't  _see_ places like this anymore. Daisy could call him a big-city snob all she wanted— Matt would go on to remain entirely unconvinced that they weren't caught in either a time warp or a front for alien invasion.

 

The grocery store was called Villynay's—  _EST. 1967,_ as the sign out front proudly proclaimed. It had a cafe with al fresco seating and, while waiting for Daisy and Kylo to come back from the post office, Matt and Rey ate fried green tomatoes with sweet peach aioli as they took in the view. The Solleu River curved around the leafy downtown area, with its pristine white storefronts, shaded lanais, fish shacks, and the occasional indigo planter's mansion here and there. The gravel roads were sun-dappled, the treetops feathery like red-and-gold lace.

 

"Aliens," Matt said under his breath.

 

Rey shot him a quizzical look but said nothing. Only Daisy, out of everyone in the whole world, would have understood what he meant, but what Matt liked about Rey was that she never pried, being an intensely private person herself. No one could ever tell what she was thinking unless she deigned to share it. He was very,  _very_ curious as to why she hadn't gone all the way up to Kanchenjunga's summit, but Daisy had given him strict orders to stand down in that regard.

 

Matt cleared his throat, figuring that he could at least sate his curiosity on  _other_ matters. "How are you and Kylo getting along? It's not..." He trailed off, searching for the right word. "Weird, or anything?" Well, of  _course_ it would be fucking weird, but Matt had never claimed to be an expert in social graces. What he was  _trying_ to convey was that, if it was really bothering Rey, he wouldn't mind switching rooms with her. It would only be for three more nights, after all; surely he could put up with his brother's cagey emo-ness for that amount of time.

 

"It's not as weird as I expected it would be," Rey surprised Matt by saying. "I mean, we  _were_ friends once, so a little of that is coming through. It's just that he's going out of his way to be nice and it's a bit— frustrating, I guess?"

 

"He feels guilty for what he did three years ago. As he should."

 

Rey made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Water under the bridge."

 

Matt scoffed. "No one's  _that_ zen."

 

"You'd be shocked." She flashed him a tight-lipped, enigmatic smile, and something about that jogged his memory.

 

"I was the one who picked Kylo up at the airport when he came back from India," Matt said slowly. "He looked— pretty much the way you do now. That expression. Like something had happened to him that he didn't have the words to describe and he didn't know whether it was good or bad."

 

Rey was quiet for a while, as if he'd given her something to mull over. "It's always like that," she told him at last, gazing off into the distance. "No matter how many times I return to the wilderness, I'm always surprised by how much it changes me."

 

Daisy and Kylo showed up not long after, the latter carrying a rather battered-looking cardboard box wrapped in packing tape and covered with a bevy of postage stamps. "You'll never guess what happened, it's the coolest thing," Daisy gushed, brandishing an envelope. "A package arrived for Grandpa three months ago, from someone in Porto Alegre named Mace Windu!" She handed the envelope to Rey, who fished out a letter printed on cream-colored stationery.

 

Matt moved closer to Rey and read the letter over her shoulder.  _My old friend,_ said the neat lines of serif type,  _I hope this parcel finds you in good health. You left Porto Alegre in such haste twenty-four years ago, but I don't begrudge you for that. The birth of a grandchild is a joyous occasion, one that is not to be missed. I myself am dictating this letter to my own grandson, who was born two years after you left._

 

"Didn't ol' Mace get the memo that your mom was having triplets?" Matt asked Daisy.

 

Daisy laughed, shaking her head. "Grandpa didn't know, either. By the time they picked up three heartbeats, he was already in Brazil, so Mom and Dad decided to just surprise him when he got back." Her eyes were suspiciously misty behind her glasses, and Matt drew her onto his lap, giving her hip a comforting squeeze as he resumed reading.

 

_Back then, you told me you were retiring to America for good and entreated me to keep in touch. I am ashamed to say that I lost your address until yesterday, when my daughter found it while cleaning out my old study. It was pressed between the pages of a Jim Corbett book, can you imagine! You must think I've forgotten all about you._

 

"Oh, we have to write back to him," Rey murmured. "This letter is dated five months ago... I hope we won't be too late."

 

_I am sending some things you left at my place and which I have kept safe all these years. A notebook with field observations from your time in Africa, your trusty old compass, and a letter from young Skywalker, may his soul rest in peace,_ Mace Windu's note concluded.  _Obi-Wan, I must be honest, I do not think you and I will see each other again in this life. However, I look forward to meeting you in the next, where I shall, as I always have, be proud to call you my brother and my friend._

 

* * *

 

They waited until they were back at the summerhouse to open the box. Rey was paler and more subdued than the rest of them, and Kylo had an idea why. She had been Obi-Wan's favorite, the granddaughter who shared his love for adventure and who would sit at his feet for hours, listening wide-eyed to stories of other lands. The morning he passed away quietly in his sleep, she had been watching the sunset on Mount Kilimanjaro, and Kylo knew that, for as long as she lived, Rey would carry the scar of not being able to say goodbye.

 

"You should probably have the first crack at this." Daisy handed Anakin's letter to Kylo, who glanced at Matt.

 

Matt shook his head. "He was never anything to me. You know that." There was an apologetic note in the youngest Solo's tone. "We never met him, but you followed in his footsteps, anyway. So it would mean more if you read it first."

 

Kylo nodded, taking the folded piece of paper from Daisy and stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans. He'd save it for later; now didn't quite seem like it was the right time.

 

Kira and Ben wandered into the living room and Rey brought them up to speed as Daisy examined the rest of the box's contents. The silver compass was passed around and marveled over, as was the field journal. Obi-Wan had peppered his notes with staggeringly realistic sketches— a herd of oryx thundering over the plains, a cheetah sitting on its haunches, an egret in mid-flight.

 

"Well, at least we know someone inherited Grandpa's artistic talent," Daisy said, smiling fondly at Kira.

 

Kira blew her nose, the gesture somewhat more theatrical than necessary because she was obviously trying to deflect the compliment, the way she always did. But her cheeks were pink, and Kylo noticed that, when she traced one of the sketches with her fingertip, it was with a gentle sort of reverence.

 

The journal eventually found its way to Rey, who carefully turned to the last page. "Here he says he's going back to England tomorrow. He's planning to sell the family estate and donate the proceeds to a couple of hospitals— one in Nairobi, one in... Calcutta? Oh, right, they hadn't changed the name yet. And he wrote something else, too." Rey straightened her posture and began to read.  _"I watch the dawn break over the Serengeti and I think about all the rivers and lakes I have crossed, all the forests and deserts that have tested my spirit, all the wonders I have seen. And yet it is the people I remember most dearly— all the hands I have held, every face that has smiled upon mine. I think about the soil of various lands that crusted my fingernails and caked the bottom of my shoes. And I come to one irrevocable conclusion: the Earth has changed me."_

 

"I'm not crying," Kira said. She was glaring at Ben, who was smirking at her knowingly.

 

"Speak for yourself," Daisy sniffed, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief as Matt tutted and rubbed soothing circles onto the small of her back.

 

Kylo could only look at Rey. She closed the journal and returned it to the box, calm as always, keeping her thoughts to herself.

 

For dinner they ordered pizza from the one joint in town that delivered and brought out the beer stash that they'd lugged all the way from Massachusetts. Kira and Ben had to content themselves with clam chowder and lukewarm orange juice, but they joined everyone else out on the back porch, overlooking the lake. Faceless, distant strangers were setting off fireworks on the opposite shore— most likely boozed-up teenagers with too much time to kill. The crescent moon was all but obscured by clouds of silvery smoke and whorls of jewel-toned light, scarlet and emerald and amethyst and gold flashing and pulsing in the black, fiery flares streaking across the night sky.

 

Conversation was slow and languid, with the occasional burst of laughter as a joke was made or a particularly hilarious memory was dredged up. Leaning back in his rocking chair, holding his beer with fingers greasy from the pizza, Kylo could finally admit to himself that he had missed this— simply  _being,_ with the Kenobi sisters and his own two siblings, all of them softened by the inexorable, drowsy spell of country rhythms. It was a night when old bonds could be rediscovered, and old grudges put to rest.

 

And, at last, when the clock chimed midnight, when the last of the fireworks ebbed, when there was a lull in the idle chatter broken only by the sound of water lapping at the shore, Rey said, "Kanchenjunga is sacred to the people of Sikkim. That's why Jessika and I decided to turn back. Our sponsors paid for a special license to allow us to set foot on the summit, but, at the end of the day, I don't think any amount of money..." She trailed off with a helpless shrug. "We should never have begun the ascent in the first place, but it was always a dream of mine, you know? To conquer all the eight-thousanders. Every day on that circuit, however, I felt wrong, like I shouldn't have been there at all. It wasn't my hardest climb, but it was somehow the worst. When the peak came into view, I realized that I couldn't do it. Jessika must have picked up on my hesitation and guessed the reason behind it, because she turned around without another word. I'm glad she did, so I could follow her back down instead of pushing forward." Rey bit her lip, looking haunted. "It was such a clear day," she said in a softer voice. "I could see the summit, it was  _right there._ A few more steps and I'd make history."

 

"But at what cost?" It was Kylo who spoke. Rey started, and then offered him a brief, grateful nod.

 

"Yes, that's what I thought, too." She sighed. "So, there you guys have it. I didn't touch Kanchenjunga's summit because, for some people, it was the face of God. I don't know how to explain it better than that."

 

"For what it's worth, sis," Kira ventured after a while, "I think Obi-Wan would have been proud of you."

 

* * *

 

Kylo was still thinking about Rey's confession later that night as he lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling while she slept peacefully on the other side of the room. It occurred to him that Kira was right, that Obi-Wan  _would_ have been proud.  _It is the people I remember most dearly._ Wherever you went in the world, amidst all the strange and beautiful things you saw and all that you learned about yourself, it had to be the people you met who mattered most of all.

 

Unable to fall asleep, Kylo switched on the lamp and took Anakin's letter from where he had placed it on the nightstand. He unfolded it carefully, the old paper soft and worn between his fingertips. He stared at the date first, made some calculations, and surmised that Anakin had written this a month before he died in Kerala.

 

His grandfather's penmanship was a messy, hurried scrawl, as if it was all he could do for his hand to keep up with the jumble of thoughts spilling from his brain.  _Obi-Wan,_ Anakin had written years and years ago,  _truly I believe it is of the_ Naja _genus, this serpent that has eluded me for two decades now. I discovered a bit of shed skin with the ocelli hood mark, but my university thinks it is just from a regular Indian cobra. I know better. I know it is here somewhere in the jungles, waiting for me, the black snake with red eyes..._

 

Kylo read through the rest of the letter with a dreadful falling sensation in his stomach. He understood now that these were the feverish writings of a madman. Anakin made no mention of his children or the wife who had perished in childbirth; there was just, for him, the beast of the Malabar Coast. And Kylo had made the same mistake, albeit with happier results— but could he really say that? He had honored his grandfather's legacy and brought justice to the man's memory in death, but it had cost him Rey, hadn't it?

 

_Tomorrow I set out for another expedition,_ the final paragraph stated.  _I hope that this time I will return to America in triumph, but, if not, then I shall simply go forth again. It's waiting for me. I know it, and one day I shall find it._

 

Kylo shuddered. He tossed the letter back onto the nightstand and flicked off the lamp, and there, in the darkness of a southern night, he finally let his grandfather go.

 

* * *

 

Rey had been almost too drunk to function the first and only time she slept with the love of her life. She wasn't proud of it, but that was what had happened. She'd been grieving the loss of a friend and mentor, desperate to feel something that would hold up to the shadow of death. She probably hadn't been very fair to Kylo in that regard.

 

She barely remembered anything from that night. It was a blur of burning kisses and clumsily tangled limbs, and then that searing discomfort between her legs. What  _did_ stand out in her memory, though, in excruciatingly vivid detail, was the morning after. Waking up to find Kylo's side of the bed empty and cold. Cooking the bacon with just the slightest bit of crisp at the edges, the way she knew he liked it. And then sitting down and waiting and waiting...

 

Rey had never cooked breakfast after that day. Strange how even the small things can be gateways to past trauma. But, on their second-to-the-last morning in Naboo, she woke up before everyone else and figured she might as well give it another shot. Daisy deserved a chance to to sleep in and, besides, it seemed rather pathetic for someone who had climbed K2 in winter to be afraid of the bad memories that turning on a stove would bring.

 

Rey's hands trembled slightly as she mixed the pancake batter and started drizzling it into the skillet.  _God,_ she thought,  _I really stood there in his kitchen and did the whole housewife thing. I was so pathetic._ Her eyes stung as she made breakfast, but she controlled herself because she'd cried enough for Kylo these past three years, hadn't she? The most recent time— and the  _last,_ she'd promised herself— had been when they turned around on the Kanchenjunga circuit, a few days after she and her team had left the base camp at Green Lakes to rejoin civilization. They'd spent the night in the valley and Rey had woken up to find the tents covered in a sheen of ice. She'd crept outside and the sun had been rising over Kanchenjunga, Pandim, and a dozen other peaks, a faint pink wash settling on those ancient, snow-covered mountaintops as the prayer flags strewn throughout the valley fluttered in the breeze, illuminated by pale golden light streaming down from the heavens. Rey had burst into tears, her heart feeling like it was breaking anew from both bone-deep regret and the piercing glory of it all. And in that moment she had forgiven Kylo, forgiven herself, perhaps even forgiven Teng Malar for leaving her too soon.

 

"Rey."

 

The sound of her name in Kylo's deep voice, still raspy from sleep, brought her back to the present moment, alerted her to the fact that there was a pancake that needed flipping. She glanced over her shoulder to see him standing in the kitchen entrance, his dark hair disheveled like he'd just rolled out of bed. She wondered what  _she_ looked like to him, in her faded T-shirt and ratty shorts, zoning out in front of the stove. He must think she was such a spaz.

 

"We're out of eggs," she said, focusing her attention back on her task. "Villynay's should be open by now, though, so you can run out and get some."

 

"Would you like me to?"

 

"I don't mind either way. Do  _you_ want eggs?"

 

"I could go out and get some if you wanted—"

 

"Kylo." Her grip tightened on the spatula that she was going to whack him over the head with if he didn't cut it out within the next few seconds. "If you'll pardon the pun, you've been walking on eggshells around me this whole trip. You really want to keep that up for the rest of our lives?" She transferred a golden-brown pancake from the skillet to the plate on the counter with an unnecessary  _clang._ "I'm not mad at you, all right? At least, not anymore. It was something that happened and now it's time for us to move pass it."

 

There was a lengthy silence and, just as she thought he'd left, she heard him move further into the kitchen. "Just pancakes are fine." His voice was scratchier, more nervous than it had been moments ago. "Smells good."

 

"Yeah, well, let's hope you stick around to eat them."

 

She shouldn't have said it. She'd meant it as a joke, a way to show him that she was over it, that she'd let bygones be bygones, but her breezy, flippant tone rang so achingly hollow in the stillness of the summerhouse, the note of black mirth framing her sentence so awkwardly that it was almost grotesque. Rey's cheeks burned as she poured the last of the batter into the skillet.

 

"Forget I said that," she managed to grit out. "I—"

 

Strong arms encircled her waist from behind, holding her so tightly that the breath was almost squeezed from her lungs. Through the thin material of both their shirts, she could feel Kylo's heart hammering against her spine in ragged beats as he curled his massive torso around hers, the scruff of his jaw prickling the crook of her neck.

 

"I'm sorry," he mumbled into her skin. "Rey, I'm so damn  _sorry."_ His voice broke on the last word. "I fucked up, okay? That night— and the morning after— I fucked up." He pressed a desperate kiss to her cheek, and then to her temple. "I'm sorry."

 

She could only be grateful that she still had enough presence of mind to turn the stove off. At least he hadn't made a  _complete_ idiot out of her yet. "You don't get to do this, Kylo," she said evenly, staring at the pitiful, half-cooked pool of batter in the skillet, hating how her body was a traitor, how it longed to melt against him. "I already forgave you. There, on Kanchenjunga. I forgave you without hearing a single apology— without hearing  _anything_ from you for three whole years."

 

"I made a mistake." He was trembling now, this mountain of a man, his words sounding as strained as if they were being pushed out through a lump in his throat. "I was ashamed of what I did. I thought you'd be better off without me in your life—"

 

"Oh, well, that's nice!" Rey snapped. "That's really what someone wants to hear after weeping all the way from Massachusetts to London and then spending months on standby, waiting for you to call—!" She struggled to free herself from his grasp. He let her go, but no sooner had she whirled around to glare at him when he suddenly sank to his knees in front of her, utterly defeated, his large hands clutching at her hips and his face buried in her stomach.

 

"I'm sorry," Kylo kept saying, over and over again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He was crying, Rey could feel his tears seeping through her shirt. "You were it for me, you always have been, and I messed it up and I couldn't handle it. I'm sorry. I'm a coward, but I love you—"

 

"No, you  _don't!"_ she burst out, horrified when the first wave of tears began streaming down her cheeks as well. "Love doesn't  _work_ like that, Kylo! You don't just  _run out_ on someone, you don't just treat them like a one-night stand and then leave them hanging—"

 

But he shook his head, kissing the flat of her stomach, the spurs of her hips, the waistband of her shorts, every touch as fierce and reverent as a prayer. "It wasn't a one-night stand," he rasped. "Not for me. I loved you then and I love you now. I've never been with anyone else since that night. I will  _never_ be with anyone else, even if you decide not to give me a second chance—"

 

And,  _oh,_ hope was such a beautiful, terrible thing. It pierced through the haze of numbness that Rey had been trapped in for three years, that had temporarily lifted only whenever she stood on the summits of her beloved Himalayas. It leaked into her heart like sunlight etching a valley in gold.

 

"Is that what you want?" she whispered. "A second chance?"

 

"Please," Kylo mumbled, his face still hidden in her shirt, his fingers digging into her skin. "Please."

 

* * *

 

The kitchen was deserted when Daisy stumbled in at nine in the morning, but she was pleased to note that breakfast was already taken care of, dishes heaped with pancakes set out on the counter with a jug of maple syrup within reach. She was less pleased to realize that the mystery chef hadn't bothered to clean up, but she could handle that later.

 

Not in the mood to eat when she was only half-awake, Daisy made some coffee and wandered out onto the back porch, steaming mug in hand. It wasn't long before the door creaked open and her fiancé joined her.

 

"We're out of eggs," Matt complained.

 

"And whose fault is that?" Daisy teased. "You and your brothers eat enough for twenty men."

 

"We're growing boys," he quipped, slipping an arm around her waist. She folded herself into his lanky frame with a contented sigh, looking out over the lake and the scarlet trees that surrounded it. Autumn in Georgia was truly something else.

 

"Did you mean what you said yesterday?" Daisy asked. "That I'd be a good mom?"

 

"Sure." Matt kissed the crown of her head. "Our kids are going to grow up fat and happy."

 

Daisy giggled.  _Our kids—_ she liked the sound of that. She hadn't really had the time or the inclination to date when she was younger. It had been difficult to connect with people, to find someone who could speak her language and keep up with the way her mind was always racing from one topic to the next. And then Matt had happened, her childhood friend with his grumpy scowls that turned into reluctant grins and his dorky clothes and the silly notes left on her work desk written in binary that had, slowly and steadily, turned into messages of love as time passed.

 

"I'm glad it's you," Daisy said, snuggling closer to him.

 

Matt smiled against her temple. "I'm glad it's you, too."

 

* * *

 

Kylo awoke to a quiet, shadowy bedroom, sunlight peeking in through the gaps between the curtains. There was a weight on top of him, warm and pleasant and smelling like wildflowers. Hardly daring to believe that this wasn't a dream, he slipped his hand beneath the hem of Rey's shirt, spanning the small of her back with his fingers.

 

She stirred slightly, burrowing deeper into his chest, her arms still looped around his neck. Earlier in the kitchen, she'd joined him on her knees on the floor and looked into his eyes, holding his face between her small hands. "Don't hurt me again," she'd begged, and Kylo had promised, and then he'd kissed her senseless and carried her to their room, where they had held each other and talked it all out, a long and emotionally draining conversation that had ended with them falling asleep in this exact same position. His arms ached from having been locked around her for hours, and he suspected hers weren't faring much better. But that seemed so inconsequential now.

 

Kylo was just starting to wonder what on earth could have woken him up from the heaven that was Rey's embrace, when her phone buzzed with the insistence of an unread message. Grumbling under her breath, she reached for the offending device, lifting her head from his chest to squint at the screen.

 

"It's Kira," she told him. "She and Ben are feeling a lot better, so they decided to go into town for lunch with Matt and Daisy. She said our door was locked and we weren't answering, so they went ahead—  _Kylo!"_ Rey half-laughed, half-squealed his name, because he had suddenly rolled over and pinned her onto her back. "You—"

 

He kissed her, long and slow and sweet. He kissed her the way he hadn't been able to three years ago. She mimicked his movements with a shy curiosity that he found endearing at first, but soon he started to  _wonder._

 

He gently pulled away, brushing a kiss to the tip of her nose. "Have you ever...?"

 

Rey shook her head. She didn't blush, instead gazing up at him with pure sincerity in her hazel eyes. "Not since you. Not since that night."

 

Kylo groaned, dropping his head to rest on her collarbone. "I don't deserve you," he muttered as he began to trail his lips along the slope of her neck. "I'll make you forget that night. I swear I will."

 

And he proceeded to make good on his vow. Time passed slowly in a series of fierce, lingering kisses and hands wandering all over, every minute blossoming and bursting like fruit on the vine. He undressed her worshipfully, caressing and nibbling at every inch of skin as it was revealed to him. Every sigh she made was a benediction. Every flash of her smile was his saving grace.

 

Finally, when all their clothes were laying in haphazardly discarded piles on the floor, Rey peered down at Kylo with an intrigued expression on her gorgeous face as he peppered her inner thigh with languorous kisses. "What are you doing?" she asked breathlessly, flushed and disheveled and lovely and  _his._

 

He smirked up at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I owe you one, don't I?"

 

It was a break from tradition, and perhaps the start of a new one— a Solo  _actually_ paying his debts.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the vacation passed without incident, and when it was time to make the drive back to Chandrila, Ben had recovered enough to take the wheel for a few hours. His nose was still stuffy, though, so he and Kira— who sat in the passenger seat— shared a box of tissues between them as the Falcon cruised up the I-95.

 

It hadn't been a  _terrible_ vacation, all things considered, Ben mused to himself. No one had killed anyone, at least. Would that the rest of his life with his siblings and the Kenobi sisters go as smoothly. He rather doubted it, but, if anything, this trip had shown him that whatever happened down the line, it would never be boring. He and Kira had followed Daisy's advice and spent most of their last couple of days in Naboo on the porch, and they'd been too worn out to fight overly much. It had been— dare he say it—  _nice,_ and as traffic came to a standstill he found himself looking over at her as she fiddled with her Spotify playlist.

 

She tensed up, sensing his scrutiny. "I'm not changing the music."

 

"Didn't ask you to, sweetheart," Ben replied, lips quirking.

 

"Don't call me that." But a faint pink blush had suffused her cheeks. That was interesting, and new, and it made him happy, somehow.

 

Ben's gaze shifted to the rear view mirror. Daisy was making Matt look at color schemes for the wedding, and the latter seemed to have adopted the reliable strategy of nodding at the phone screen and agreeing with whatever she was saying. Kylo was asleep, snoring softly on Rey's shoulder, their joined hands resting on her lap. Ben was glad that they'd figured it out, even if it did mean that he had to sacrifice his last remaining brother to the specter of commitment.

 

He looked at Kira again. She had now leaned back in her seat, holding a wad of tissue to her nose.

 

"Eyes on the road, Solo," she admonished.

 

"But I like the view," he teased.

 

Kira stuck her middle finger out at him. Ben chuckled, shaking his head and returning his attention to the freeway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story, such as it is, is dedicated to everyone I've ever met on my travels. The old gentleman on the train to Salzburg, the couple who asked if I could take their photo on the mountain trail in Taipei, the French expat selling banana pancakes on the sidewalk in Phnom Penh, the museum aide in Vienna who said "It's okay, it's good to be moved like this" when I burst into tears in front of a Correggio painting, the yuppies I played Cards Against Humanity with in Singapore, the Japanese tourist who spoke Filipino to me in Siem Reap, the backpackers in Bangkok, the street musicians in Munich, the war veteran in Saigon, the guys who got lost with me in the Fussen forest after we explored two castles— just to name a few faces out of all the faces that have smiled upon me, from every corner of this Earth <3


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